


Coraje: A way of performing that shows impetuosity or daring (lit. "courage")

by ComplicatedLight



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, First Kiss, I think we can all agree - Julie Lockhart is a BAMF, Lewis Summer Challenge 2017, M/M, flamenco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 07:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11984718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/pseuds/ComplicatedLight
Summary: Lewis and Hathaway head to Seville in the height of summer to pursue a murderer. They find themselves deeply affected by the place and the people, the heat and the music . . .





	1. Tuesday, 3pm: On the Plane

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the fic is based on a term—coraje—used in flamenco. Definition and translation taken from [this wiki page.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_flamenco_terms)
> 
> Thank you so much to the lovely Willowbrooke for such thorough, helpful and encouraging beta-ing. I have, of course, fiddled with the fic rather a lot, post-beta, so all linguistic clumsiness and punctuation cock-ups are mine and mine alone.
> 
> The fic is set somewhere around the end of series 3.

“I’m not exactly designed for economy class myself, sir.”

Well, yes, maybe it is a bit rich to be going on about how cramped the plane is, when his sergeant has had to fold himself up like a besuited deckchair to fit into his seat. Lewis rubs his hands over his face and sighs deeply. This case has been a bloody nightmare from the start, and being cooped up like a couple of battery hens for the best part of three hours is doing nothing to improve it.

Hathaway glances up from his book, looking as fed up as Lewis feels. “We’re not even half-way there yet.”

“Don’t I know it.” Lewis grimaces. He’s feeling pretty bad about how things have gone over the last few days. “We’ve made a bloody dog’s dinner of this case, James.”

Hathaway closes his book and angles himself round towards Lewis. “Well, to be fair, sir, some of that’s been down to things outside our control.”

“I know. But we let ourselves get distracted.”

“By all the men pointing the finger of blame at the only woman in sight? It’s an age-old story; some would say it’s the original story.” 

“Well, we should have known better.”

“Yes.” Hathaway looks pained, as well he might. “Agreed.”

When Peter Chancery, the administrator for the Oxford Communications Engineering Laboratory was found stabbed to death in the lab’s staff kitchen on Friday evening, nothing about it had suggested a female perpetrator to Lewis. But then it had come to light that several hundred thousand pounds of lab funding had disappeared, and attention had turned to the lab’s main funder—TelCom Madrid, a Spanish telecommunications multi-national and Oxford Communications’ near neighbour in the university science park.

At which point, several of the senior lab staff—all men—had been only too happy to suggest Maria Elena Ortega, the UK head of TelCom Madrid, as a possible suspect. By all accounts Ortega is intelligent, demanding, ruthless and ambitious—none of these qualities being particularly valued in women, of course. Not a single interviewee has had a positive word to say about her, beyond grudging acknowledgements of her business acumen.

Several theories have been offered as to why Ortega might have turned to murder. Maybe Chancery had worked out that she’d been siphoning off the money and had confronted her? Or maybe she’d propositioned him and he’d turned her down, and she’d stabbed him in revenge? The latter speculation—offered with barely contained amusement, presumably because Ortega is not conventionally attractive—had left a bad taste in Lewis’ mouth. 

In fact, none of it had felt right to Lewis, but before he could get a chance to question her, Ortega had done a runner, and for a couple of days, that had appeared to be that . . . until the second murder. Early this morning, a cleaner found the director of Oxford Communications, Professor Harpreet Singh, dead in his office. But crucially, Laura Hobson has put the time of death as yesterday afternoon, and it’s now been established that Ortega was on a flight to Seville, her home town, while Singh was being stabbed. So she’s out of the frame, and they still have a murderer at large.

Ortega has gone to ground in Seville, and with good reason: the person who Lewis is now convinced is the murderer—Miguel Escarrer—Ortega’s second-in-command at TelCom Madrid UK, hopped on a flight to Seville yesterday evening. So, two people dead, and the murderer in pursuit of a third, presumably because she saw something, or worked something out, being the clever woman she is. She obviously got to the punchline quicker than Lewis and Hathaway, anyway, and that’s not something Lewis is particularly proud of.

It’d taken a stand-up row with Innocent at nine this morning to get her to agree to them flying out to Seville. As she’d quite rightly pointed out, it’s absolutely not their job to chase murderers across Europe. And she’d also been right that the local police are not going to be thrilled to have a couple of British coppers turning up and poking their noses into business on their patch. And of course, they’ve already passed all the crucial information about the case, especially the risk Escarrer poses to Ortega, to the Spanish authorities. But Lewis doesn’t like leaving a job half done. And he doesn’t at all like that another poor sod could die because he and Hathaway worked out too late who the bloody murderer was. He’d had to threaten to pay for the flights himself before Innocent had glared at him, reached for her headache tablets, and said she’d see what she could do.

In the end, what she's managed to do is make arrangements for them to assist the local force in Seville. Their contact there is Inspector Luisa Ortiz de Rozas, who apparently has asked for it to be made very clear to them that she neither requires nor welcomes the assistance of two British officers who have already failed to apprehend the murderer in their own city. The day has been bloody awful so far, and Lewis can see that it’s pretty likely to get worse. 

Meanwhile, Hathaway, twisted awkwardly and with his knees jammed against the seat in front of him, appears to be reading an English/Spanish dictionary. 

“Surely you can’t think you can learn a language from scratch in three hours?! I mean, I know you’re a clever sod, but even you . . .” 

Hathaway glances at him and shrugs. “Well, it’s not quite from scratch. Spanish is a romance language—it has its roots in Latin, and I do know Latin.”

“I know what a bloody romance language is.” Lewis knows he’s being an irritable bastard. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but he’s anxious about them pursuing Escarrer in a foreign city, where there’ll be a lot they won’t understand—not just the language. And where, if they do get into trouble with him, they won’t know how dependable their back-up is until it’s too late. He sighs and Hathaway seems to take it as some sort of apology and rewards him with a glimpse into the rarely opened book of his past. 

“There was a time when it looked like I might be sent to a Spanish seminary, so I learned a bit then.”

“Would that be _learned a bit of Spanish_ like you _did a bit of rowing_ at Cambridge?” Hathaway just smiles at him like the inscrutable sod he is, and goes back to his reading. Lewis is left musing on all the other questions he would have liked to have asked but chose not to. What’s the point? He’s learned that Hathaway will tell him precisely what he wants to tell him, and not a thing more, regardless of what Lewis asks. Lewis quizzing him always makes things awkward between them, one way or another—and that’s the last thing they need right now.

 

* * *

 

As they step out of the plane, the heat hits him—it’s like opening the oven door when you’re roasting something and it feel likes your eyebrows are getting scorched off. His shirt is already sticking to his back and they’re not even in the airport building yet. “It’s like walking into Satan’s bloody sauna.”

Hathaway smirks and doesn’t give him a theological lecture, which is the only good thing that can be said about the day so far.


	2. Tuesday 6pm: Inspector Luisa Ortiz de Rozas

In retrospect, maybe it was a mistake coming straight to the police station from the airport. The look on Inspector Luisa Ortiz de Rozas’ face as she meets them in the station lobby tells him everything he needs to know about how dishevelled and sweaty and knackered he must look. It’s over twelve hours since they examined the scene of Harpreet Singh’s murder, and since then they’ve survived on bad coffee and worse sandwiches. If he looks half as bad as he feels, Lewis has some sympathy with her scowl. 

It doesn’t help that she’s immaculate, if severe, in a well-cut black trouser suit and a white shirt. Her dark hair is scraped back into a tight bun that has Lewis thinking of flamenco dancers; something about her posture too, the way she moves with her back ramrod straight, brings to mind the elegance of a dancer. She is very attractive and he wonders if the severity of her clothing and her constant frown are a way of trying to get herself taken seriously in the no doubt male-dominated and macho world of the Spanish police force. 

Hathaway says something in broken Spanish by way of an introduction, but she practically rolls her eyes and replies in heavily accented but excellent English. “Inspector Lewis. Sergeant Hathaway. I will be honest with you. I do not understand why you are here. Do you think we have never caught a murderer before?”

It’s a fair question. On impulse Lewis decides to be honest with her—it’s unlikely that her opinion of them can get much lower than it already seems to be. “I know, Inspector, I know it’s not the way things are usually done. The truth is, we should have arrested Escarrer while we had the chance, and we didn’t. I want to help put that right now. It’s no reflection on you and your team—I don’t know you and I don’t have any reason to think you’ll do anything other than an excellent job. I’m just an old copper—police officer—wanting to see the job through to the end. Can you understand that?”

She looks at him and then at Hathaway, frowning all the while, and then with a sigh of resignation she taps in the code to release the lobby door and leads them into the bowels of the station. “We will have a briefing meeting now and make plans for tomorrow morning. I warn you, several of my colleagues do not speak good English and the meeting will largely be in Spanish.” 

The meeting starts off downright hostile but an hour and a quarter later when it breaks up, an uneasy alliance has been formed. In part, it comes from Lewis and Hathaway’s confidence that the Spanish team are competent—they’ve already done the things that Lewis would have done if he were leading the investigation—enquiries to all the major hotels in the city, trying to track down Escarrer, and visiting all of Maria Ortega’s known family, both to look for her, but also to put the word out that the police know she’s innocent and want to protect her, because it’s possible that one of the people they’ve talked to is in contact with Maria but isn’t letting on. 

He and Hathaway also seem to have managed to convince Ortiz de Rozas and her officers that they really aren’t in Seville to try and tell them how to do their jobs, and that it’s possible the two of them might actually be able to contribute something to the investigation. Much of this has been achieved through Hathaway persevering with his attempts to follow the multiple conversations going on around them in rapid Spanish, and interjecting when he can. His attempts have been met with some amusement, but he’s managed to make his meaning understood, and most helpfully, he’s repeatedly put the brakes on the meeting to get Lewis caught up and to give his boss a chance to offer his own thoughts. Lewis knows that this struggling to make himself understood, this inability to be articulate and the amusement his efforts are causing, must be difficult for Hathaway. Lewis feels a wave of gratitude for his awkward, singular sergeant.

So, plans have been made for tomorrow that include the two of them. There’s not much they can do on their own, of course, but they’ll go along with Ortiz de Rozas and one of her team on their early morning tour of some more places they think Escarrer could be staying. In the meantime, all they can do is get to their hotel and get some rest, and pray that Maria Elena Ortega has found herself a safe place to hide for the night.

As they make their way back to the lobby, Hathaway walks ahead, sorting out something to do with their mobile phones with one of the Seville team. Lewis walks behind them with Luisa Ortiz de Rozas. He nods towards Hathaway who is frowning as he appears to be mentally running through his Spanish and Latin vocabulary, searching for a word he needs. “He’s an excellent sergeant. I’m very lucky. I don’t know what I’d do without him sometimes.”

She looks at Lewis with curiosity. “Your sergeant speaks Spanish like a 16th century bishop with a memory problem.” 

He’s heard Hathaway called some things in his time, but ‘16th century bishop’ is really up there. He grins at her. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me one bit.” Ortiz de Rozas raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow at him, and there’s the slightest hint of amusement in her eyes. Lewis finds he’s rather pleased to have caused it; well, he has to share some of the credit with James’ eccentric Spanish, but even so. 

 

* * *

 

In the taxi on the way to the hotel—where according to Innocent’s PA they have one ‘adequate’ room reserved, God help them—he asks Hathaway what he makes of Luisa Ortiz de Rozas. 

“She’s very good at her job, as far as I can tell. Terrifying, though.”

Lewis smiles at him. “Is she? A bit serious, maybe. Very beautiful, don’t you think?”

Hathaway regards him with interest. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know. I’m pretty certain most ancient goddesses were considered to be both beautiful and terrifying—as were angels for that matter.”

“And which do you think Inspector Ortiz de Rozas is, James? A goddess or an angel?”

Hathaway smiles at him enigmatically. “What mortal can say?”

They lapse into tired silence for a while. Lewis rests his head against the back of the taxi seat and watches the ancient city pass by, radiant in the early evening light. The air conditioning in the police station had been cranked up to just this side of arctic, but the taxi doesn’t appear to have any air conditioning at all, so despite all the windows being down and there being a constant breeze passing through, it’s still hot to the point of sweat and sleep inducement.

Hathaway’s brain, however, clearly hasn’t shut down through heat and exhaustion. “What do you think about the case, sir?”

Lewis sighs. “What I think is the obvious—we have to find where Maria Ortega is before Escarrer does. Where would you hide if a bloke was after you and you couldn't go anywhere easy to predict? The problem is, he knows her well, so he’ll know all the obvious options—better than we do, I’m sure. So where would she go? Somewhere he wouldn’t think of or know about?”

Hathaway tilts his head to one side, thinking. “Or somewhere a woman can go but a man can’t?”

“Such as? Are there women-only hotels? Clubs? Where?”

“Oh.” Hathaway’s clearly just had a brainwave. “Yes there are women-only clubs—they’re called convents. Lot of them in Spain. Maybe there’s a connection with one we don’t know about?” 

“I think you might be onto something there, James. What time is it in England, now?”

“With the hour’s time difference, just before six thirty.” 

“Right. Give Julie Lockhart a call. See if she’s still there. We need her to look through all that paperwork we took from Maria’s flat again. I know a lot of it’s in Spanish, but she can at least look through the stuff in English. Damn it; we really need to be able to go through the stuff that’s in Spanish too, don’t we? I mean, if there is some kind of link with a local convent, the paperwork’s going to be in Spanish, isn’t it? Can Julie fax or email anything in Spanish that looks like a possibility, straight to Luisa Ortiz de Rozas’ office?”

He doesn’t envy Julie Lockhart the job—they’d taken boxes and boxes of papers and letters and God knows what else from Ortega’s flat when they were treating her as a suspect on the run—it’ll take her hours to go through it all and then to feed half of it into a fax machine or scan it or whatever she and Hathaway decide is the best way of going about it. He really wishes they still had access to Ortega’s emails, but given she’s not a suspect anymore, there’s not a hope in hell he’ll be able to convince Jean Innocent to allow that.


	3. Wednesday 6am: The Breakthrough

They’re woken just before six the next morning by an email arriving on Hathaway’s phone. Lewis has had an uneasy night’s sleep, full of anxious dreams. He’s tired but relieved to be awake. Hathaway sits up in his bed, puts on his glasses and reads for a while.

“Bingo.”

“What?”

“Email from Julie. She’s found correspondence from an aunt of Maria Ortega’s—a nun. She lives in a convent, a closed order, thirty kilometres outside the city.”

Lewis tries to wake his brain up. “Hold on a minute—they wrote to each other in English?”

Hathaway’s grinning and shaking his head in disbelief. “No, they did not. So, after she spent three hours scanning and emailing everything in Spanish to Ortiz de Rozas’ office, our Julie then spent the rest of the night typing the most likely looking stuff into Google Translate, to see what she could find.”

“Bloody hell.”

“I know.”

“Wait a minute, though. Won’t Ortiz de Rozas’ lot already have looked into this yesterday; they seem to have gone through the family pretty carefully?”

Hathaway is still grinning. “This is the interesting bit. From what Julie can make out from the letters, the aunt was disowned by the family years ago because she had a baby out of wedlock when she was a teenager—the child was put up for adoption. The family behave as if she’s dead. So she wouldn’t have come up in any conversations with them. But Julie says there’s quite a lot of letters from the aunt, including recent ones—they seem to have a good relationship.”

“Come on, then. Up and at ‘em.”

“There’s no guarantee she’ll be there.”

“I know. But I bet you she is. We need to phone Luisa Ortiz de Rozas and give her the news. We don’t want her lot finding this in the stuff Julie sent them before we can tell them about it ourselves.”

Hathaway gives him a cheeky smile. “Not that it’s a competition.”

“Course not!”

 

* * *

 

In the end it goes like clockwork. Lewis and Hathaway go with Luisa Ortiz de Rozas, pulling up outside the forbidding stone fortress of a convent just after nine. They—well, Ortiz de Rozas and Hathaway—engage in lengthy negotiations with the elderly, tough-looking nun who deals with the world outside the convent walls and who has a touch of the night club bouncer about her. She is utterly unimpressed by three police officers appearing at the convent door and makes no effort to hide it. He and Hathaway seem to be particular sources of disdain, judging by the looks she keeps shooting them. Lewis doesn’t know what arguments they try with her, but eventually, with much scowling, she tells them to wait and slams shut the iron viewing hatch in the massive oak door. He’s not at all convinced she’ll reappear, but he does find that he’s somewhat reassured by her; if Maria Ortega is here, and if Escarrer somehow managed to track her down, Lewis is pretty confident that their friend the bouncer will have given him short shrift. 

After almost twenty minutes of standing in the already dazzling sun, in which Luisa Ortiz de Rosas makes phone call after phone call and Hathaway slouches against the convent wall, smoking, they hear footsteps approach the other side of the door. The iron hatch opens, the nun checks they’re still there, and finally, Maria Ortega warily peers out at them.

At the same time, the rest of the Seville team do a series of raids on small hotels in the area of the city where the majority of Ortega’s family live, and Escarrer is picked up without difficulty. He has a box of kitchen knives in his room that he apparently bought yesterday. He confesses to the murders but won’t tell them where the missing funding is, so they begin the process of going through his financial affairs with a fine toothcomb, trying to track it down.

 

* * *

 

An hour later, everyone involved in the case congregates in the main meeting room at the station, and there’s a far more convivial atmosphere than there had been yesterday evening. Even so, there’s still police business to attend to. One of the Seville team who speaks good English—Subinspector Perez—is tasked with taking a statement from Lewis about the Oxford force’s involvement in the case. As they finish the interview, Lewis makes an admiring comment about the quality of Ortiz de Rozas’ work. He means what he says, but he’s also saying it out of curiosity, to see how Perez—her male subordinate—reacts. The bloke rolls his eyes. 

“What? You don’t agree?”

Perez gives an eloquent shrug. “She is good enough at the job. But, Inspector Lewis, she is crazy. What is she doing working here? Working at all? She comes from an ancient Spanish family—they have a very large estate in Cantabria, hundreds of thousands of hectares; they have many homes around the world. A branch of her family owns a great deal of Argentina; they are richer than you and I can imagine. She walked away from a life of polo and yachts. She could have married a financier or industrialist; royalty even, and yet she is unmarried. She could have had the easiest of lives. It is ridiculous; she does not belong here. And you know, her family disowned her when she joined the police. She gave up all that, for this.” He shakes his head with contempt. But Lewis finds that he understands Luisa Ortiz de Rozas better, respects her more, knowing that she chose this difficult life, a life where she might make a contribution to society, instead of just remaining one of the idle rich.

The woman herself walks Lewis and Hathaway back to the station lobby. Lewis smiles and shakes her hand, again painfully aware of how rumpled and grimy he must look to her. “Inspector Ortiz de Rozas, it was a pleasure working with you. A good result for all of us, in the end.”

She shakes his hand, but remains unsmiling. “Inspector Lewis, Sergeant Hathaway. I would say that it turned out better than I imagined it would.” She gives them a look so elegantly unimpressed she could give Hathaway a run for his money. 

Lewis isn’t daft though; he’s pretty sure this is what passes for a compliment with the lovely Inspector Ortiz de Rozas, and he finds himself grinning like a teenage boy who’s just been told the prettiest girl in the school likes him. Bloody ridiculous in a man of his age. He tells himself to get a grip.

“Aye, well. A lot of the credit has to go to our constable, back in Oxford.”

She nods. “I seem to remember you saying this is a woman, yes?”

“Yes. Julie Lockhart.”

She gives him the tiniest hint of a mischievous smile. “Of course. This makes a great deal of sense.” And with that, she unlocks the lobby door and is gone.


	4. Wednesday: 5pm: A Shower; a Siesta

Lewis gets the water running, pulls the last of his clothes off and gets under the shower, which he’s set to almost cold. The shower is very powerful and the blast of water against his chest is so strong it takes his breath away. But within half a minute he’s adjusted to the cold and the force, and it’s heaven. His skin has been hot and gritty and uncomfortable for hours, not least because they seem to have a knack for finding every taxi in Seville without air-conditioning. Finally, he can feel all of that being washed away by this torrent of chilly water. He doesn’t even reach for the shower gel; he just stands with his hands against the wall, either side of the shower rose, and lets the water pour onto his head, down his back and over his backside, for minute after glorious minute. Finally, when it feels like he’s cooled down so much that he might actually start shivering, he soaps himself and washes his hair. By the time he shuts off the water, he’s cold enough that the warm air he steps into as he opens the shower cubicle, actually feels welcome. He wraps a towel round his middle and goes back through to their room.

Hathaway is sitting in the upright chair in front of the writing desk, still fully dressed except for his tie and jacket. His shirt looks grubby and the collar is creased and wilted—most un-Hathaway-like. He looks tired and overheated and uncomfortable, despite the fact that the air-conditioning has kicked in and the room is approaching a reasonable temperature. He is, of course, reading, though not the dictionary this time.

“What you got there?”

Hathaway holds the cover up for him to read. 

“The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud. Julia Navarro. Don’t tell me, you’re reading a Spanish book about religion?”

“Yep, well, a somewhat trashy Spanish book about religion. In translation, regretfully.”

“Where did you get your hands on that?! We’ve only been here a day and we’ve been pretty much joined at the hip since we arrived.”

“I brought it with me.”

“You just happened to have a Spanish novel about the doings of the Church lying around. Of course you did.”

Hathaway shrugs. “It’s been on my to-read shelf for a while, waiting for the right moment.” He yawns and stretches. There are large patches of sweat under his arms. 

“Go and get in the shower, James. You look a right mess.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Hathaway gets himself to his feet but it looks like a bit of a struggle and Lewis feels a twinge of anxiety, a momentary fear that his sergeant is unwell, that he’s dehydrated or has sunstroke, even; something more serious than just being a bit tired and overheated. But Lewis has watched him down bottle after bottle of water, and it’s not like they’ve been out in the sun other than for a short while this morning, outside the convent. He’s fine. “Go on, then. Don’t just stand there. You’re heating up the room.”

 

* * *

 

Lewis lies down on his bed, just in his towel. He briefly considers putting some clothes back on for the sake of propriety, but sod it, he’s more comfortable than he’s been in two days. He stretches out—what a joy to have been booked into a room with two big double beds, rather than the stingy singles he expected. Mind you, the arrangement of the beds had caused him some consternation when they’d first arrived. The beds are pushed together, so when they’d first stepped into the room, which is rather nice, actually, with its gauzy white curtains pulled across the floor to ceiling windows to protect the décor from the punishing afternoon sunlight, it’d looked like the room was furnished with one enormous bed. Closer inspection had revealed that there were in fact two double beds, pushed up against each other, but made up separately.

It had still felt odd though, getting into bed last night, with his sergeant within reach. Lewis had wondered if he would struggle to sleep, given the room arrangement and the case and the unfamiliarity of Seville, and he’d been right. He’d woken up several times in the night, his mind full of the case, feeling disorientated and unsettled. And even when he had slept, he’d had troubling dreams; dreams where he’d kept getting lost in the labyrinthine streets of old Seville; dreams where he’d lost sight of Hathaway as they’d followed murderers down dark alleys and into gloomy old buildings. In his dreams he’d had a tightness high up in his stomach, a sense of impending disaster, a fear that something terrible was going to happen to Hathaway; and he’d searched and called out for him, all the while being watched from the shadows by silent locals. He’d woken bathed in sweat and heart pounding.

But now he feels settled and relaxed, with Escarrer charged and all the danger passed. The moment of acknowledgement from Luisa Ortiz de Rozas hasn’t hurt, either. She’s a remarkable woman, and maybe, a bit like Hathaway, he’s not sure if he fancies her or fears her. He’s aware of how good it felt to have even a suggestion of approval from her though; to see her smile. It occurs to him that maybe, in part, her unsmiling, unimpressed air is a way of inciting the people around her to work hard to earn a glimpse of that smile.

Lewis is not quite asleep, but his mind drifts through images and half-memories of the bits of Seville they’ve glimpsed from taxi cabs and squad cars. A stained glass window, high up in an old stone house, glowing red and gold. A church bell ringing, deep and slightly menacing, in the mid-day heat. And everywhere, heat and light, sun-bleached wood and stone, and shutters drawn to keep out the searching rays of the sun.

He hears Hathaway come out of the bathroom and takes a peek at him as he pads round the room barefoot, hanging his suit up and putting a few things away in his case. He’s so bloody tall. And pale. His face and neck have a bit of colour to them, but the rest of him—and Lewis can see pretty much all of the rest of him because he too is sporting just a towel—is just acres and acres of unblemished, milky skin, with a dusting of golden hair. He’s about as far away in looks as it’s possible to be from the compact, deeply-tanned Spanish men they’ve been surrounded by for the last two days. Hathaway starts loosening his towel, and Lewis quickly shuts his eyes.

Hathaway potters around for another minute or two and then lies down on his own bed and sighs.

“Better?”

“Much. That shower is a thing of wonder.” 

“Aye. I didn’t want to get out of it. Nice in here though, with the air conditioning on and no bloody suit.” 

“And no more hanging outside convents, getting fried to a crisp.” 

“Aye, that too. Worth it, though—we did a good job in the end. Even Luisa Ortiz de Rozas thought so, and she’s not an easy woman to impress.” 

“No, she certainly is not.” 

They’re both lost in thought for a while. 

Eventually, Hathaway groans, comfortably, as he stretches. “I think I could lie here for days.” 

“Well, flight back’s not till teatime tomorrow, so be my guest.” 

“Tempting, but I don’t want to waste the opportunity to explore Seville. But maybe a little siesta is called for before we do anything else? What do you think?” 

“I think you’re talking a lot of sense, James.” 

 

* * *

 

It takes Lewis a minute or two to properly wake up. He’s obviously been in a deep, relaxed sleep and he’s in no hurry to surface from it. His back feels chilly from the air conditioning, but his chest is—oh. James has rolled over in his sleep and he’s lying on his side, facing Lewis. He’s right on the boundary between their two beds. Well, they both are; they seem to have migrated towards each other while they were asleep. James has shuffled down his bed a bit and his face is barely an inch from Lewis’ chest. He can feel James’ breath come and go in warm, ticklish waves against his chest hair. _Christ._ Some mad, giddy part of him wants to close the little gap between them, but he doesn’t. He carefully eases back then rolls away, so by the time James is properly awake, Lewis is sitting on the far edge of his bed, checking the time on his watch. He hears James stretch and sigh. “Good kip?” 

“Surprisingly so, yes. Must be a bit more relaxed now the case is sorted.” 

“Aye, that’ll be it. Guess what time it is.” 

“About eight? Half past?” 

“It’s almost ten! We were asleep over four hours!” 

“No wonder I’m ravenous. Shall we head out? It’s still early for dinner by Spanish standards.” 

“Yeah, let’s do that. I fancy going on one of those tapas bar crawls. Really don’t want the hotel food again.” 

“Works for me.” James rolls himself off his bed and onto his feet in one elegant move and then stands there, nine tenths legs, as naked as the day he was born except for a pair of rather snug-fitting briefs. Lewis averts his gaze. “You thinking of going out in your pants, James?” 

“I’ve heard worse ideas. At least I might be a bit cooler.”


	5. Wednesday 10.30pm: Cante Flamenco

The first bar is nice—busy but not uncomfortably so. They share a couple of plates—tender red peppers sitting in a puddle of olive oil, and some unidentified shellfish, cockles perhaps, in a sherry sauce so intense that Lewis has to run his finger round the dish to catch the last few smears of it. They each have a glass of cava, and at James’ insistence, they share a bottle of water— _if we’re going to make a night of it, we should rehydrate as we dehydrate, sir!_ Fizzy wine is not something Lewis would usually drink, but served so cold that the glass is sweating condensation, it’s the perfect thing for a hot Seville night. It’s light and refreshing and as easy to drink as lemonade—which he needs to keep an eye on if he’s going to be good for anything tomorrow.

The second bar is OK but not much more than that. It’s certainly not the kind of place where he’d trust the shellfish. They have some slightly rubbery cheese and a bit of bread, and more cava, and then move on in search of somewhere better.

They almost keep walking when they come across the third bar because it’s so busy; the small dark room looks full to bursting, and there are people spilling out onto the pavement, talking and smoking. But then they hear the intricate run of notes as a guitarist feels a way into the start of something thrillingly flamenco-esque. They glance at each other and by unspoken agreement go inside.

It’s dark and crowded and very hot in the bar and Lewis struggles to get his bearings. But then James tugs at his arm—he’s seen somewhere for them to sit. It turns out to be a narrow space on a wooden bench near the guitarist, who is seated on the tiniest stage Lewis has ever seen. There’s another man sitting next to him too; older, with a tanned, lined face and a lion’s mane of grey hair. He has his head down, listening with great care to the guitarist, and he’s clapping a strange rhythm Lewis can’t quite get. 

Lewis and James squeeze into the gap on the bench and almost immediately a waiter appears. James orders for them, which is just as well because Lewis can hardly hear himself think above the music and the crowd. Within a few minutes the waiter returns with cava and more water, and a plate of artichokes dressed in oil and vinegar. Lewis turns to James to say what an amazing place the bar is, but they’re squashed up against each other so tightly that as he moves, their noses almost touch, and instantly he’s back on the bed, with James almost nuzzling his chest. He turns away quickly and watches the musicians for a bit. When he’s calmed himself down and thinks he can manage to look at James again, he lifts his glass. “Cheers! Here’s to a job well done—eventually.”

“Salud, sir.” 

“Call me Robbie.” The cava really has gone to his head.

“Why?” 

Oh, for God’s sake. “Because it’s me bloody name!”

“Ah, I see.”

Though exactly what James sees is lost on Lewis, with his mind foggy with wine and heat and music.

After a while, there’s more cava, more water, and this time, tiny, spicy meatballs made of pork and fennel.

“Salud, Robbie.”

“Salud, James.”

Lewis can’t remember the last time he enjoyed a night out so much; the last time he felt so happy.

This close to the stage, it’s too loud to make much conversation, which is fine, because the music is fantastic, and Lewis turns all of his attention to it. The guitarist, sitting very upright and holding his guitar high against his chest, plays rapid, fluttering notes, moving back and forth between two melancholy chords. His companion, frowning with concentration, claps intermittently, his rhythm somehow fitting and not fitting in time with the guitar. Steadily they get faster and louder, faster and louder, building and building until the guitarist is thundering chords over the rapid gun-fire of the clapping. They push and push the music, sweat pouring down their faces. And then they stop, suddenly, not ending the piece, but more abandoning the whole enterprise because it’s too painful. There’s a beat of silence; then another; then another. The whole room holds its breath. And then quietly, almost reluctantly, the guitarist starts them off once more, picking out a few quiet, measured notes, and they begin the long, slow build all over again. It’s heartbreak and fury and sex.

Then the older man, who’s still clapping his on-off rhythm, throws his head back and starts singing, and it is the most extraordinary noise, high and rough, the wailing of a wounded animal caught in a trap. There’s nothing pretty, attractive, about it, but there is dignity, somehow, in such an unguarded show of raw emotion. The guitarist watches the singer carefully, as if he’s afraid for his friend. And again they build and gain momentum, and again they halt, the singer turning away and grimacing, as if his broken heart, his need, is too much to bear. But again, somehow, he finds it in himself to breathe, to live, to sing, to lay himself bare once more.

Of course Lewis has heard flamenco music before, seen bits on the telly, but this is not that. This, this sitting within a yard or two of these men, witnessing what feels less like a performance and more like an act of bravery, this is something else entirely. This feeling the complicated rhythms of the music in his belly and heart; _this_ , he has never experienced. 

He turns to James, who turns to him at the same moment, and there’s something about them moving in unison, something about the music and the heat; it feels like the moment before a kiss, that moment of exquisite anticipation when you know it’s going to happen; the thrill before the thrill. Lewis pulls back, disorientated. He downs the last of his cava, and the moment subsides.

 

* * *

 

An hour later the music’s over and they start to head back to the hotel. Even this late there are lots of people on the streets, but Lewis and James take a shortcut through the quiet, shadowy alleyway alongside the bar. After a moment Lewis realises James has stopped. He turns; James is standing a few yards back, with one hand braced against a wall.

“You OK?”

“I’m, yes, I’m fine.” He doesn’t particularly look it.

Lewis walks back to him. “James?”

“I’m OK. Can we just stop for a minute?”

“Course. You feeling ill? We can get a taxi.”

“No. Really. It’s just . . . the music. It was—” He frowns. “I . . . _shit_ —” He shakes his head. “I’m not normally quite this inarticulate.” 

Lewis smiles softly at him. “I know that.”

James leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. After half a minute he opens them again, looking down at the pavement. “I keep wanting to tell you about flamenco; things, facts, but—” He grinds to a halt again, clearly struggling. 

If he’s honest, Lewis isn’t doing much better. His feelings are all over the place almost to the point of nausea, and his head is full of cotton wool or concrete or some other material that’s getting in the way of sensible thought. “It wasn’t really a facts kind of night, was it?”

James looks up, directly at Lewis. “No.” He blinks. “No, it wasn’t.” When he speaks again, there’s wonderment in his voice. “ _God_ , did you _see_ him?!”

“The guitarist? I know, he was incredible. The speed his fingers—”

James shakes his head. “No, the singer. I mean, yes, the guitarist, but . . .” He sighs. “The singer—” He shrugs, helplessly, and then half turns towards the wall, and doesn’t quite hit it but pushes the palm of his hand roughly against it and grunts in frustration.

Clearly, the music has completely unsettled both of them: James looks like a wild animal, bracing itself against the bars of its cage, and Lewis, Lewis thinks he might actually throw up if his heart doesn’t start behaving itself. It feels like it’s using up so much space inside his chest that there’s no room left for his lungs or anything else vital. He presses his hand flat against the wall, alongside James’. “ _James_. I _know_.”

James curls his hand into a fist and then flattens it against the wall again. Then he turns away and looks like he’s going to start walking and Lewis grabs him by the shoulder. “Are you done?”

“No.” James stands still, with his back to Lewis, and drags his hands through his ridiculously short hair. “No.” He turns, clumsily, and without warning, he’s in Lewis’ arms, and Lewis has his hands on James’ face and is kissing him before he even knows what he’s doing. 

It’s not a great kiss. James is gripping the back of his neck so tightly it hurts, and they haven’t really got a clue what they’re doing with each other—it’s more like brawling than kissing. They push away from each other like they’ve been scalded. 

“Shit.” James’ eyes are wild. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stares at Lewis, who stares back, trying to catch his breath. And then they’re kissing again, and this time it's better, though it’s still a bit clumsy, rougher than anything Lewis can ever remember doing. He feels shockingly feral. He pushes James hard against the wall, just shoves him up against it with all his weight, electrified by how James’ size and strength somehow allow him to not hold back, to not be gentle. There’s a grunt of appreciation from James as Lewis flattens him against the wall. They kiss and kiss, rough, open-mouthed kisses, pulling each other in, closer and closer, pressing harder and harder against each other. And it’s all fantastic, really fantastic—until James pushes his hand down between them and squeezes Lewis’ hardening cock through his trousers. _Christ_. Lewis rears back: “James, no. Not a good idea.”

James groans. “Shit. I thought . . . _Shit._ Sorry.” He shakes his head and drops down onto his haunches, leaning back against the wall for support. “What a fucking disaster.” 

Lewis steps towards him again, heart still pounding from the kiss. “Well, getting arrested for having a hand job in an alleyway strikes me as more disastrous. That’s all I was thinking.”

James stares at him, looking completely thrown. Lewis offers him a hand up. “Come on; up you get. You being on your knees isn’t going to do us any favours if someone does come along.” 

At that, James snorts and shakes his head in disbelief. He gets up and they stand facing each other. James rubs his hands over his face. “Look, I’m sorry about . . . I got a bit . . .”

Lewis gives him a wry smile, a shrug. “I know. Me too.”

James looks at Lewis the way he looks at the pieces of evidence in a case when nothing makes sense. “But you’re straight.”

“I am.” Lewis agrees. “So you can imagine my confusion when it turned out I really wanted to snog your face off.”

James’ eyes widen. “You could just put it down to the drink and the music, maybe?”

“Maybe.” Lewis thinks for a bit. “Though I did bump into Hooper at a beer festival once, a couple of years back. There was a trad jazz band playing and I’d had four pints. I seem to recall I managed to keep me hands off him.” This elicits another snort from James. “What about you, James?”

“Have I ever snogged Hooper? No, definitely not.”

Lewis shoots him a look. 

“No, I don’t think it was just the flamenco and wine for me. Obviously, they were facilitative, but . . .” 

“Facilitative. Sounds about right.”

James rolls his shoulders and yawns. “So what happens now?” He looks as worn out as Lewis feels.

“Well, I think we go back to the hotel because we’re knackered and a bit all over the place. We climb into bed and have a good sleep and we see what tomorrow brings. OK?”

“Yes, of course.” 

They start the walk back to the hotel. Neither of them says anything for a while, though James is thinking so hard Lewis can practically hear him. He nudges him with his elbow. “You’re thinking.”

“I usually am.”

Lewis is too tired to argue with that.

It isn’t until they’re skirting round the edge of the Plaza de Espana, almost back at the hotel, that James decides to think out loud. “You said bed. Climb into bed—singular.”

Lewis glances at him. “It was just a thought.”

James catches his eye and then looks away, smiling. “A good thought.”

 

* * *

 

Lewis closes the door behind them and leans back against it, yawning. _Christ_ , it’s been a day. He’s been up over twenty hours and he’s beyond knackered. James puts the air conditioning on and stands awkwardly next to the giant bed, and Lewis just doesn’t know what to do next. He needs information.

“James, I know you don’t like me asking you personal things, but—”

“I’m bisexual.”

“Oh, right; good. I mean, so, you’ve done this before. You know, with a bloke.”

James presses his lips together; frowns a bit. “No, actually. I haven’t.”

“I don’t follow. You said—”

“I’m attracted to men and women, but I’ve never actually done anything about it—with men . . . the Church, well, for a long time I . . . you know . . .” He looks away and studies the air conditioning remote in his hand.

“Right. But, what we did just now; that was OK? I mean, I’d hate to think—” _Christ, why is talking about this stuff so bloody difficult?_

James puts the remote down and takes a couple of steps towards him. “No, I wanted to. I really wanted to.” James’ cheeks are blazing. He looks directly at Lewis. “I’ve always wanted to . . .”

Lewis is fairly certain James didn’t mean that like it sounded, but his heart has decided to go into overdrive just on the off-chance. The space between them is charged with electricity and they look at each other and look at each other . . . and then James breaks into the most spectacular yawn and that makes Lewis yawn, and then they're smiling at each other, smiling at the absurdity of the situation.

Lewis scratches the back of his neck; yawns again. “Look, this is important. We should talk about, well, you know—”

James nods. “I know. But not tonight; please God, not tonight. I think I’m going to start hallucinating if I don’t go to sleep soon.”

Lewis huffs out a breath, amused. “I know. The pattern on that carpet’s started to move—I don’t think that’s a good sign. Tomorrow, though . . .”

“Tomorrow, of course. For now, Robbie, can I just ask—I take it you never have, with a man?”

“No. Was it that obvious?”

James smiles and shakes his head. “You do know you can just have that as your one mad, gay moment—never to be repeated?”

Lewis has to laugh. “I know. I know.” He tries to think what he wants to say, but he’s so tired and wrung out, his brain won’t work properly. “Look. I’m a bit . . . I’ve only ever been with women. But what we did back there—it was fantastic; really, it was.”

James looks surprised; gobsmacked, even. But he also looks pretty damned happy, and the way he smiles at Lewis makes something new, some tender shoots of something new, unfurl in Lewis’ chest. He puts his hand on James’ shoulder. “It _was_ lovely—I’m not going to lie to you. And I’d try it again, _will_ try it again, definitely, if that's what you want. But right now all I’m good for is sleep. Seriously, if I don't get some bloody sleep I’m going to keel over.”

 

* * *

 

They get on with the business of getting ready for bed, quickly and silently. There’s nothing romantic or sexy about it, no smouldering looks, no undressing for each other. By tacit agreement they both climb into Lewis’ bed. It turns out James is the big spoon, at least for tonight. Lewis switches the bedside light off and shuffles back until he’s pressed against James’ chest. James’ arm comes round him and pulls him in even closer. 

The room’s chilly from the air conditioning now, but James is warm and smells faintly of aftershave and sweat, and it is the most comforting thing, lying in James’ arms in the dark, absolutely exhausted, but knowing he can sleep now. 

As he slips into sleep there’s a flamenco singer, fearlessly showing the world his heart, which is a bruised, bloody thing; a heart which somehow the music is healing. There’s the too-bright, too-hot light of Seville, scorching everything but illuminating everything, making everything clear. And there’s James—hands in pockets, slouching against the wall of an old Spanish church. He’s smiling at Lewis, a proper, _every beat of my heart is happy_ smile. He’s been waiting for Lewis; waiting to kiss him.


End file.
